@Eve those people need to find an old graveyard and spend some time reading the headstones. It’s very disturbing to see rows of young children from the same family. The first time I did was an experience that has never left me.

@Eve If anyone studies their own family history, it really stands out that 150 and more years ago, lots of kids did not live to adulthood, and lots of women died in childbirth.

@Eve I remember two of my friends having pretty much exactly that exchange when I was in high school.

The one who asked the question reconsidered her position.

@Eve go to a graveyard, Carol. All those little round balls are the graves of babies who died from diseases we now vaccinate against, or treat with antibiotics. All relatively new products of *medicine*.

@Eve @vmstan survivors bias

@Eve People used to have 6+ children so that maybe one or two might actually survive through to adulthood.

When people talk about "all natural" being somehow automatically better, they forget that there is nothing more natural than getting mauled by a bear and nothing less natural than growing and cultivating your own food, living inside an artificially created shelter even as storms rage outside, and having the communication devices they use to spread misinformation about nature.

@Eve My sister-in-law would have been really happy had her mother been able to get rubella vaccination. She might have told you but she never learned to talk, or walk or feed herself, or toilet herself, in her short life.

@Eve my great-uncle Freddy died in the 1918 flu. He was three or four.

@Eve

Yes. And many many more were permanently disabled. Heck of a "life." 🤢

@Eve dying is a very natural thing too, they should know that

@Eve
There is a reason families had a ton of kids because so many died. My maternal grandfather was the only one of 6 kids who survived long enough to have kids.

@Eve “Well, I don’t know anyone who’s died of measles.”

“Yes, because they, you know, died.”

@Eve "we were much more healthy without modern medicine"
Well, yeah, you were either very healthy or very dead

https://med-mastodon.com/@jeneralist/113492755928586949

This graphic shows clearly how childhood mortality has changed, due to improved sanitation and vaccines.

@Eve Before pasteurisation, an untold number of people died of consumption - the old name for mycobacterium tuberculosis...or bovine TB.
The reason for large families was because children often didn't survive infancy.
I praise those who worked tirelessly to create vaccines.
I have nothing but contempt for mindless antivaxxers.

@Eve They became horribly ill beforehand, and infected other people, too. Then they died.

@Eve it’s the difference between survival of the species and survival of the individual. Personally, I’m rather fond of my own children, so I’ll do what protects them.

@Eve

Antibiotics and vaccines ARE natural. They are made by human beings, who are as natural as any other living things. The challenge for us as thinking creatures is in how to live harmoniously with the rest of nature, not how to live as though we were not here at all.

@Eve

Several of my friends got to live in a tube until they died. Sometimes for years.

Some details in the alt text.

@Szescstopni

@Eve
That "life expectancy" statistic that went up over the last couple of hundred years? That is from people taking their doctors' advice. Including the advice to get vaccinated.
The lower life expectancy from before is due to, you know, people dying younger.
Relevance of vaccination. And statistics.

Nature by itself doesn't deserve any respect. The reason we care about the environment is because we need it to sustain our own life, not because "the nature is good" somehow. The nature itself just happens, it doesn't give a shit about things like climate change or pandemics. So it follows, then, that the only aspects of nature that make sense to be respected are the ones that help us, humans, live better.